The importance of muscle memory in user interface design resurfaced recently on an elevator ride to the 5th floor in our Waltham, MA building. I work on the 6th floor and our building is going through a “modernization” phase (an ironic term given how long it is taking). Part of the work involved the elevators, of which there are three – two passenger, one freight. All used to have the same control panel interface with even floors on the right and the buttons on the wall used to call the freight elevator independent from the other two.
So what has this modern era brought? The buttons on the wall no longer call the freight elevator separate from the other two. Any one of three elevators responds regardless of which button you press. Sounds better, right? One button calls three elevators instead of two or one. Except now the layout of the freight elevator’s panel is different from the other two. So after having been conditioned (in some cases for years) to press a button on one side of the panel, folks now have to think about where there floor is on the button panels resulting in a few unscheduled trips to the 5th floor.
The elevator is a simple example of poor design, but there are cases where conscious design decisions are made to break muscle memory patterns. For example, over a year ago we changed the top navigation panel in QuickBase. The goal, based on user research, was to rework some of the main application control access points to make it easier for first-time users. It came as no surprise that some long-time customers initially objected since they had spent years accessing controls from a different location. Here, the goal to improve a new user’s experience came at the expense of existing users as is often the case in software design.
Another example is the ribbon interface introduced in Office 2007. During the last three years of my 8-year tenure at Microsoft I worked on this change and as you can imagine it was controversial and the decisions were argued over for years. But extensive user research showed the menu structure of previous releases was not supporting the tasks most people did most of the time. Year after year new features were added which resulted in common features getting lost in the pile – an especially difficult situation for new users.
One particularly controversial choice was whether or not add to a “classic” mode where long-time users could simply turn off the ribbon and revert to the traditional menu structure with which they had developed muscle memory after years of repetitive use. Ultimately the cost of supporting two models led to the rejection of the classic mode. Now you can find companies that build add-ons for Office 2007, like the one shown below, that allow users to have both models in one. Confusing? Welcome to the modern world.
